whitebread

Transformers is a two hour commercial for the “war on terror”.

Yes, I know I sound like a conspiracy theorist, but once I framed the movie this way it was hard to watch. Consider the following.
1. We are short on troops in Iraq.
2. The movie starts in a middle-east desert.
3. The evil Transformers hide amongst us, and clearly have no respect for their lives or anyone else’s. Sound familiar?
4. The marines prevail, despite taking terrible losses.
5. The one marine we get to know comes home to his child.
6. The movie is full of fast-paced cool military jargon that even got my blood pumping. And I hate the military.
7. “Losing isn’t really an option for these guys.” and “You’re a soldier now!”

Before the government in the movie realizes what’s going on, they theorize that maybe it’s China or North Korea…but wait! It’s a greater threat than we could even imagine!

Thus, the movie is simultaneously conditioning us to ignore other countries, fear hidden (i.e. terrorist) threats, be prepared for losses in the “war”, and rest assured that if we go to war we’ll come back safely. It may as well have been funded as a recruiting film by the Army, so far as I’m concerned. Join up, and you’ll get to fight evil, do really cool stuff, and live to tell about it.

Edit:
Well if I’m a nutter about this, at least I’m not the only one:

As the day progressed, I learned more about the military’s extensive co-operation on the Transformers: the filmmakers mentioned plans to do some filming at Edward’s Air Force Base and possibly outside the Pentagon. (”I don’t believe they’ve allowed a movie, since 9/11, to film the exterior of the Pentagon,” said co-producer Ian Bryce. “We’re the first, and it’s because we have a very strong relationship [with the military], and we’ve worked hard to make sure that relationship is solid, that they trust us.”)

When asked about conditions for the military’s co-operation, Bryce replied: “Michael [Bay] and I both have relationships with the military from previous movies. The first step is to go to them and just alert them that there’s a project that really requires military co-operation and assistance. So we made some phone calls a year or so ago and just let them know we were out here, and there was a script.”